Chapter 78 Check Your Basement
(for Ancient Horrors, Probably)
Kazimir
The morning reports were already giving me a headache, and I hadn’t even finished my second cup of coffee.
“—and Lord Brightwater insists the latrines near his quarters are inadequate,” Vex continued, reading from her list. “He’s threatening to write a formal complaint to ‘the powers that be’—whatever that means—about ‘substandard accommodations.’ ”
I set down my cup so hard it cracked the saucer beneath. “Tell him he’s welcome to shit off the side of the fortress if he finds our facilities lacking.”
“I’ll phrase it more diplomatically.” Vex made a note. “The kitchen staff also needs approval for expanded storage. With all the new residents our current supplies won’t last through winter.”
“Approved.” I waved a hand. “What else?”
“Construction on the east wing is ahead of schedule. Griffin only set two things on fire yesterday, which is practically a record.” She paused, frowning at her notes. “Though there is one issue.”
I leaned back and arched an eyebrow. “Only one?”
“The workers repairing the wall near the Observation Tower found something.” Vex’s expression shifted to something between concern and curiosity. “An opening behind the stones.”
I straightened in my chair. Skyspire had been my fortress for over a decade. I knew every room, every passage, every secret corridor. Or so I’d thought. “An opening?”
“Leading down into the rock itself. The workers…” She hesitated. “They were terrified. Practically begged to be reassigned. Said they heard strange noises coming from below.”
“Strange noises.” I stood, already reaching for my coat. “Did they describe these noises?”
“Like whispers, they said. Or singing. Or screaming. They couldn’t seem to agree.” Vex closed her ledger. “I told them to seal it back up until you could investigate.”
“Good.” I pulled on my coat, checking that my daggers were in place. “Show me.”
We made our way through the fortress, and I again congratulated myself on sticking to the rule that there were to be no “guests” in the Inner Sanctum. At least here I could have some peace and quiet—
I leaped aside as two children—children!—ran past, chasing what looked like one of Griffin’s escaped experiments. Wait… why were they running through my courtyard?
“Vex,” I growled.
“It’s recess. They needed a more open area to let off some steam. Apparently, they haven’t been applying themselves to their studies since moving to Skyspire, and we thought—”
I turned to find the source of this chaos.
The children had stopped their chase and were now staring at me with the unabashed curiosity only the young possessed, whispering behind cupped hands.
And supervising this disaster? Thorne, my security chief, who was currently helping a small girl untangle a tentacled rabbit from her hair.
“Thorne?” I called out, my voice carrying that special edge that made grown men reconsider their life choices.
He looked up, his expression shifting from gentle patience to something approaching panic. “My lord! I was just—uh, the children needed—”
“Since when do you supervise recess?” I demanded.
His face reddened. “Lady Blackrose suggested someone trustworthy should watch them, and I—” He cleared his throat, trying to recover his usual gruff demeanor, but his consternation reminded me of Griffin. “Security protocols, my lord. Can’t have unsupervised children running about.”
One of the boys tugged on Thorne’s sleeve. “Can you tell us that story about fighting three ogres at once?”
I raised an eyebrow. My terrifying security chief had been regaling children with bedtime stories?
“Later, lad,” Thorne muttered, looking like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.
“The Inner Sanctum is off-limits,” I said firmly. “It’s far too dangerous for children.” Yes, that was it. Not because I didn’t want sticky fingerprints on my walls or drawings of “Mean Mr. Dark Lord” appearing everywhere. Pure safety concerns.
“But my lord,” Vex began, “the other courtyards are either under construction or—”
“What about the swamp?” I suggested. “Plenty of open space. Fresh air. Educational opportunities with the local wildlife.”
Vex’s eyes widened. “The swamp with the flesh-eating bog plants and mutant deer?”
“Character building,” I said. “Besides, the plants are mostly dormant this time of year.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then caught sight of my expression and thought better of it. “Of course, my lord. I’ll, uh, arrange for swamp supervision immediately.”
Behind her, I could hear one of the children asking Thorne if the Dark Lord really ate people for breakfast, and Thorne’s fumbling response that I preferred toast.
I needed another coffee.
“My lord! My lord!”
The high-pitched squeaking could only belong to one person. I turned to see Griffin practically galloping across the courtyard, his too-short robes flapping around his spindly legs like demented wings attached to his ass. He skidded to a halt in front of us, nearly toppling over in his excitement.
“Griffin,” I said wearily. “What’s on fire now?”
“Nothing!” He beamed, then reconsidered. “Well, nothing important. Just a small incident with the—but that’s not why I’m here!” His amber eyes were practically glowing behind his glasses. “I’ve made the most fascinating discovery about the ley line convergence patterns beneath the citadel!”
“Thrilling,” I said flatly.
“No, no, you don’t understand!” He pulled out Sims’s Doom Scroll, now covered in his own incomprehensible notes and diagrams. He’d finally modified it, and judging by a few of the lines I saw scrolling past, had used Sebastian’s suggestion of finding good news as well.
“The harmonic resonance frequencies are completely unprecedented! If I can just calibrate the—”
“Griffin,” Vex interrupted gently. “We’re actually on our way to investigate something.”
His eyes lit up even more, if that was possible. “Oh? What kind of something? Magical anomaly? Cursed artifact? Temporal distortion?”
“A hole,” I said.
His face fell slightly. “Oh.”
“A mysterious hole,” Vex clarified. “Behind a wall. With strange noises.”
Griffin’s entire demeanor transformed. He practically vibrated with excitement. “What kind? Harmonic? Discordant? Are we talking spectral emanations or—”
“Whispers,” I said. “Or singing. Or screaming. The workers couldn’t decide.”
“Oh, that’s magnificent!” He clutched the Doom Scroll to his chest. “I must come with you! This could be exactly what I need to complete my calculations on the subsonic—”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
His face crumpled. “But my lord, think of the scientific opportunities!”
“No.”
“I promise I won’t touch anything!” He held up one spindly hand. “Well, I won’t touch anything without asking first. Or unless it seems really important. Or if it’s making a particularly interesting sound—”
“Griffin.”
“Right!” he squeaked. “Silent as a tomb! You won’t even know I’m there!”
I highly doubted that, but the pleading look in his eyes was pathetic enough to give me pause. Plus, if there was something magical down there, having an enchanter along might actually be useful. Even if that enchanter had a tendency to accidentally animate inanimate objects.
“Fine,” I said. “But if you so much as—”
“Thank you, my lord!” He practically bounced on his toes. “You won’t regret this! Well, you probably will, but not immediately!”
The southwest wall was a hive of activity.
Workers hauled stones and mixed mortar, repairing damage from our battle with the Hero’s Guild.
They scattered like mice when they saw me approaching, though a few lingered to stare at Griffin, who was already pulling out various magical instruments from the mysterious depths of his robes.
“Here.” Vex led us to a section where fresh mortar showed recent work. “They covered it back up, but—”
I pressed my hand against the wall, sending out tendrils of shadow magic. There. A hollow space, just as she’d described. The stones below the new were different too—older, darker, not part of my original construction.
“Ooh!” Griffin had some sort of crystal pressed against the wall, and it was glowing faintly. “The thaumic density here is off the charts! This stone predates your fortress by at least”—he did some rapid calculations—“fifteen centuries! I can’t believe we’ve never—”
“Stand back.”
Vex retreated, dragging Griffin with her as he protested about needing more readings. I called my magic forward. The fresh mortar cracked and crumbled, stones shifting aside at my will. In moments, I’d opened a gap large enough to step through.
Cold air rushed out, carrying with it the scent of deep earth and a magic that made the runes on my bones ache with recognition.
“Fascinating!” Griffin had already darted forward, poking his head through the opening. “The temperature differential suggests a significant depth! And that smell—definitely Old Dominion construction. You can tell by the way it makes your teeth itch!”
“My teeth don’t itch,” I said.
“Give it a minute,” he said cheerfully.
“My lord,” Vex said quietly. “Perhaps we should bring backup.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” I conjured a ball of purple-black fire in my palm and held it out.
The opening led to stairs carved directly into the rock.
They spiraled down into darkness, worn smooth by countless feet over countless years.
“Besides, it’s my fortress. I should know all its secrets.
And anyway, Arabella is the only person who could possibly get us out of trouble if we should find something I couldn’t deal with.
And she’s busy catching up Lord Peregrine on pertinent information. ”
Neither Vex nor Griffin seemed comforted, as if they’d rather wait until Arabella was free. I grumbled and started down first. Vex followed despite her obvious reluctance. Griffin practically tumbled after us, his various instruments clanking and whirring.
“The acoustic properties are remarkable!” His voice echoed strangely. “I’m detecting at least three different types of stone in the construction, each with its own resonance frequency!”
“Griffin,” I warned.
“Right, right, silent as a tomb!” He lasted approximately three seconds. “Though technically tombs aren’t that silent. There’s decomposition gases, settling stones, sometimes the occasional undead—”
“Griffin.”
“Shutting up now!”
The temperature dropped with every step.
My breath misted in the air, and frost began forming on the walls.
The shadow fire in my hand flickered, fighting against some unseen pressure.
We had passed the depth of the old foundation that housed the training room, and even the old storage space where Arabella trained with constructs.
Then I heard the sound the workers had described. Like whispers, yes, but also like singing. A chorus of voices just at the edge of hearing, but it wasn’t a language I knew. The runes on my bones burned hotter, responding to those alien syllables.
“Oh my,” Griffin whispered, all his manic energy suddenly subdued. “That’s not good.”
“What do you mean?” Vex asked.
“The frequency.” He was fiddling with one of his crystals, which had gone from glowing to pulsing an alarming shade of red. “It’s all wrong. Like something’s trying to exist in two places at once.”
“My lord—” Vex began.
“I hear it.” I pressed forward.
The stairs ended abruptly, opening into a vast chamber that shouldn’t exist in the floating rock below the citadel. My shadow fire expanded, trying to fill the space, but the darkness here was hungry. It ate at my flames, reducing them to a feeble glow that barely illuminated the entrance.
But what I could see made my blood run cold.
The walls were covered in carvings. Not just any carvings—runes that resembled the ones carved into my bones. Thousands of them, spiraling up into the darkness, telling a story I couldn’t quite read but somehow understood.
“By the ancient texts,” Griffin breathed, his voice barely audible. “These are… Primordial Binding Runes. The kind used to”—he swallowed audibly—“the kind used to imprison gods.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Vex asked.
“I, um.” He lowered his voice. “Ever since we learned of Lord Blackrose’s alter ego, I’ve been doing some… reading.”
“At least that’s more helpful than illustrations from the Enchanted Isles,” Vex muttered.
At the center of the chamber, barely visible in the dying light of my fire, something massive stirred.
“Lord Blackrose,” Vex breathed, and I’d never heard that note in her voice before. “What is this place?”
I stepped forward, unable to stop myself. The whispers grew louder, more insistent, and for just a moment, I could have sworn they were calling my name.
Not Kazimir.
Something else.
“Um,” Griffin squeaked, all his enthusiasm evaporating like morning mist. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
The shadow fire died completely, plunging us into absolute darkness. But somehow, I could still see. The runes on the walls began to glow with a faint, sickly light, and in that illumination, I finally saw what waited in the heart of my fortress. My runes flared in recognition.
Griffin whimpered.
Vex’s hand found my arm in the darkness, gripping it tight enough to bruise. “My lord, I think we should—”
But whatever she was about to say was lost as the thing in the chamber opened its eyes.
Griffin made a sound that could generously be called a squeak but was closer to the noise a stepped-on mouse might make. “Too late to run?” he asked hopefully.
The eyes—ancient, terrible, and familiar—fixed on us with interest.
“Far too late,” I murmured.
The whispers rose to a crescendo, and the thing in the darkness began to move.